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1989 Pergamon
Press plc and J. ,Jalari
HOW “THEY” SEE “US”
Native American Images of Tourists
University
Deirdre
of Southern
Evans-Pritchard
California,
USA
Abstract:
Native American folklore and mythology has many examples of
burlesquing
“the Other.” Such historical parodies and critiques of “the
whiteman” influence contemporary
attitudes towards tourists. Pueblo and
Navajo silversmiths in New Mexico express and manipulate stereotypical
images of tourists and Indians in making and selling their work. This
helps them deal with the problems of face-to-face interaction with tourists.
Stereotypical
images can function to defend and protect as well as to
discriminate.
Tourism research can profit from greater attention to “host”
specific interactions
group attitudes towards “guests,” and situationally
between tourists and locals. Keywords:
folklore, images of tourists, strategies for communication,
stereotypes.
R&urn&: “Eux” et “nous”: comment les Indiens d’Am&ique
voient les
touristes.
Le folklore et la mythologie
des Indiens d’AmCrique offrent
beaucoup d’exemples de tourner “l’autre” en ridicule. De telles parodies et
critiques historiques du Blanc influencent les attitudes actuelles envers les
touristes. En faisant ct en vendant leurs ouvrages en argent, les orfevres
Pueblo et Navaho du Nouveau Mexique
expriment
et manipulent
des
st&Cotypes des touristes et des Indiens. Ceci les aide B r&oudre les probltmes de l’interaction
face-i-face
avec des touristes. Les st&Cotypes peuvent fonctionner pour difendre et protCger aussi bien que pour &ablir des
discriminations.
La recherche en tourisme peut profiter d’une plus grande
attention aux attitudes des groupes qui re$oivent envers leurs “invitts”, et
2 l’interaction dans une situation spCcifique entre les touristes et les gens
du pays. Mots cl&: folklore, images des touristes, stratbgies de communication, stCrPotypes.
INTRODUCTION
On the whole, researchers
of colonialism,
acculturation,
and social
change have concentrated
on local responses
to colonialism
(such as
revitalization
movements,
cargo cults, religious
syncretism,
etc.) and
have rarely examined
local perceptions
of the actual agents of such
change,
the colonialists
themselves.
Despite evidence of Native American depictions
of the whiteman
from the period of first contact
onDeirdre Evans-Pritchard
(2045 Pinehurst Road, Los Angeles CA 90068, USA) is a
Doctoral candidate in the Folklore and Mythology program, University of California,
Los Angeles. She is also a lecturer in the School of Cinema-Television,
University of
Southern
California.
Her current work examines the interface of tourism,
ethnic
groups (especially Native Americans),
and the American legal system. Her research
interests include “folklaw,” conceptualizations
of tradition, car culture, and documentary film.
89
90
NATIVE AMERICAN
IMAGES
OF TOURISTS
wards, relatively
few stories, jokes,
and figurative
portrayals
of the
whiteman
were collected or published because researchers
generally felt
that this did not represent
true Indian culture (D’Oro
1985; Holden
1976). An exception
was Lips, who wrote a ground-breaking
book in
1937, The Savage Hits Back: Or the Whiternun Through Native Eyes, which
cataloged figurative portrayals of the whiteman
throughout
the colonial
world. Only recently
have scholars begun to produce
any systematic
commentaries
on Indian views of the whiteman.
Some of these have
been by Native Americans,
such as Deloria
(1969)
and Lame Deer
(1972),
some by “whitemen,”
such as Basso (1979) and Holden (1976).
Such commentaries
have contributed
to the belated
awareness
that
Native Americans
have a sense of humor (Salabiye
1986).
One reason that so little has been written about how “they” see “us” is
that the attention
of social scientists
has been elsewhere,
focused on
cultural relativism,
ethnic identity, and symbolic
systems.
This leaves
the impression
that cultural
enclaves are all inward-looking
populations, disinterested
in the world outside. Currently,
in the wake of the
self-conscious
underpinnings
of psychoanalysis,
the rise of theories of
meta-art
and meta-theater,
and the reinstatement
of subjectivity
in the
social sciences,
scholars
have refined the concept
of reflexivity
and
started to study themselves
as they study others. This has spotlighted
biases in the ways we interpret,
record and analyze ethnographic
material (cf. Clifford
1981; Fabian 1983; Geertz 1979) and created rules of
ethics in fieldwork.
But such sensitivity
to Western
ethnocentrism
is
only half the story: worrying
about the distortions
foisted upon ethnographic
material
by culturally-trapped
researchers
is still worrying
about how we see ourselves,
not how “they” see “us.”
In this context,
then, the images that one group draws on when
characterizing
another
group have been examined
from the angle of
majority
views of minorities
more than from the angle of minority
views of the majority.
Hence studies of the significance
and effects of
Anglo-American
stereotypes
of Indians
are easier to find than vice
versa (e.g.,
Albers and James
1983; Honour
1975; Stedman
1982;
Todorov 1982).
Yet it is safe to assume that from the moment Indians met whitemen,
they were comparing
and contrasting
these strangers
to themselves.
Indian responses
to the whiteman
have varied with the times, historically following
a pattern of astonishment,
messianic
worship,
armed
revolt,
and finally
bitterness
(Blackburn
1979;
Lips
1937:25-27).
Whatever
the period,
Native Americans
have always reviewed
the
whiteman’s
national
and personal
characteristics
and dramatized
his
actions,
follies, and motives through
art, performance,
stories,
and
jokes. They have caricatured
the fire and brimstone
of the missionaries,
the financial
gouging of the traders,
the hypocrisy
of the great white
chiefs, and the credulity
of the anthropologists
(Levitas,
Vivelo,
and
Vivelo 1974; Witt and Steiner 1972). Like other “native” groups, Indians have developed
rationalizations
to explain why the unprincipled,
greedy and deceitful whiteman
has so much power and wealth. More
recently,
the whiteman
has presented
himself
to the Indians
in yet
another
role, the tourist,
and the Indians’
critiques
continue.
Native
DEIRDRE
EVANS-PRITCHARD
91
American
responses
to tourists are deeply informed
by the historical
background
of Indian attitudes to the whiteman.
Basso’s eloquent and seminal work (1979) on Western Apache imitations and parodies
of the whiteman
considers
the significance
of
Apache images of the whiteman
in the context of Apache life on the
reservation.
Basso analyzed
spontaneous
Apache performances
done
for Apache-only
audiences,
and showed how these “portraits” provided
ways of understanding
and dealing with the whiteman
(Basso 1979).
Taking his work as a starting point, the purpose of this paper is to
look at Southwest
Indian images of the tourist in the context of Indians’
actual interactions
with tourists when selling their arts and crafts (this
analysis is based on material
collected during three years of intermittent fieldwork in Sante Fe, New Mexico).
These images are part and
parcel of communication
with tourists,
and provide Indians with formulae for protecting
their privacy while selling to the tourists.
Indian
conceptions
of tourists are more than commentary
on the whiteman,
they are effective responses to the double-edged
nature of tourism.
IMAGES
OF THE
WHITEMAN
AS TOURIST
Not all references
to white visitors are readily accessible
to researchers. They are often obscure,
expressed through analogies,
indirect allusions or traditional
narrative
figures,
and frequently
drenched
with
irony (Holden
1976).
Anthropologists
have often been unaware
of
pointed critiques
of their own behavior.
They can be oblivious
to %ative” opinions of them, partly because people naturally
avoid criticism
and partly because
social scientists
expect to observe indigenous
cultures in context -not
to be observed.
In this sense, fieldworkers
are
tourists and the two share characteristics
that become the butt of Indian
jokes and stories that ridicule collectomania
(see, e.g. Freilich
1970;
Howe and Sherzer
1986). Barre Toelken,
a folklorist who worked with
the Navajo for many years, collected the following story that epitomizes
the ways in which Indians can outwit social scientists:
On Warm Springs Indian reservation in central Oregon, some people
tell a story about a wandering anthropologist
who came across a
coyote caught in a trap.
“Please let me out of this trap; if you do 1’11give you lots of money,”
the coyote said.
“Well, I’m not sure. Will you tell me a story too?”
“Sure I will. I’ll tell you a real, true story, a real long one for your
books.”
So the anthropologist
sprung
the trap, collected
a big handful
of
bills from the coyote,
and then set up his tape machine.
The coyote
sat, rubbing
his sore legs, and told a long story that lasted until the
tape ran out. Then he ran off.
The anthropologist
went home and told his wife about what happened, but she wouldn’t believe him. When he reached into his pocket
to show her the money, all he came out with was a handful of fur and
dirt.
And when he went to play his tape for the other professors,
all that
was in the machine
was a pile of coyote droppings
(Toelken
1977:xi).
92
NATIVE AMERICAN
IMAGES OF TOURISTS
The Wiley coyote, quintessential trickster of Indian lore and a modern emblem of Indian cultural freedom, is completely in character
when he tricks the naive anthropologist.
Equally in character is the
whiteman. Replace the tape recorder with a camera, and one has a
tourist. In this joke the whiteman is continually seeking what the Indian has, expecting him to have answers about nature, religion, and
philosophy. Here the whiteman-anthropologist
sees the coyote’s story
as a commodity. He trades for what he wants from the Indian, takes it
back into his own cultural milieu and, reifying it, infuses it with value
out of context. Of course, taking it out of context turns it into dreck,
because you cannot distill true Indian culture into collectables.
Reifying culture is fundamental to cultural tourism and fits well with
the general sense in Indian folklore that the whiteman is a slave to
consumerism.
A Native American graduate student once told this writer that the statement “the whiteman would sell his own grandmother if
he could” is frequently heard amongst Indians. In 1972, Sioux medicine man John Lame Deer said “For the white man each blade of grass
or spring of water has a price tag on it
. The Sioux have a name for
white men. They call them wasicun, fat-takers
. . Americans are bred
like stuffed geese- to be consumers, not human beings” (Lame Deer
1972:32-33).
The whitemen-tourists
in the following joke are consumers who are
unable to see the humanity of the Indian they come across. (This joke
was told to the crowd at the opening of the Museum of Indian Arts and
Culture,
Santa Fe in the summer of 1987):
A couple flew into Albuquerque airport to visit the Southwest. They
rented a car and drove off to Laguna Pueblo down the old ‘66. They
stopped off in Laguna to see the place. As they were walking around
they saw an Indian woman making bread in an Indian oven-which
looks like a large earthen beehive. “Umm, that smells good,” they
thought, and decided to buy some. So they sat down and watched the
bread being baked, bought some and ate it.
The couple carried on their way down Route 66 and entered Navajo lands. They were heading towards Chinle, when the woman saw
another beehive-shaped hut in the distance. So the woman said to the
man, “Hey, let’s get some more of that great bread. We’ve run out of
what we had before. Let’s get two loaves this time.”
But the Navajos don’t use these huts for baking bread, they use
them as sweat baths. They have a curtain across the entrance and this
was down, and a Navajo man was inside sweating away. He looked
outside and saw these two white folks coming towards him in their car.
He decided to wait until the car went behind the small hill in front of
the sweat house and then run for it. So as soon as the car had disappeared behind the hill, he drew back the curtain cover and started
running off, naked, across the plain.
Just then the white people’s car rounded the corner, and the woman
saw him running away. “Oh honey,” she said “isn’t that wonderful, they
even bake gingerbread men in there.”
These tourists, literally eating their way through the Indian reservations of New Mexico and Arizona,
are too ill-informed
to tell a Pueblo
DEIRDRE
EVANS-PRITCHARD
93
Indian from a Navajo,
and too ignorant
to recognize
real Indian culture when they stumble across it. Nevertheless,
in the face of a strange
new phenomenon,
they draw on their own preconceptions
and limited
experiences
as they struggle to interpret the signs of Indian life in front
of them. Of course their ridiculous
interpretation
reflects their overriding interest in consuming,
but it also renders the strange familiar
in
terms that they understand
(interestingly,
the motif of the gingerbread
itself is almost certainly of Anglo-American
origin, having been adapted by the Navajo to suit their needs). In the process, they dehumanize
the Indian,
patronizingly
turn him into something
“cute,” and see him
as a fit object for consumption.
That the Indian’s nakedness
is no surprise conforms
to tourist expectations that Indians
live primitively.
The Indian streaking
across the
desert, however, is not naked because of his simple lifestyle but because
he has been stripped by tourist inquisitiveness
and chased by tourist
hunger for native culture.
The folkloric and literary motif of Indians
being stripped by the whiteman
encompasses
the ravages of all white
expansionism,
not just tourism.
A second Navajo joke reiterates
this
motif:
A young man was walking along a dirt road. He was looking for his
horse. He was wearing a breech-cloth,
like they used to do in those
days. They wore it like a diaper with a string around the waist to keep
it in place. The remaining cloth was left hanging down in the front
and back.
He was walking, when suddenly a car stopped for him. The driver
was a whiteman. He got in and they took off. When they went a little
ways down the road, he stopped. As the young man was getting out of
the car, he mistakenly closed the door on the back part of his breechcloth. Without looking back, the whiteman cruised off in a hurry. It
took with it the whole breech-cloth the man was wearing. He was left
naked by the road (Keith Cunningham,
personal communication).
This joke depends on the incongruity
of the Indian’s public nudity.
Humor often results when norms are confounded,
but besides the sheer
ludicrousness
of the situation
and the socially-taboo
male nudity, the
joke’s painful irony expresses a general Native American
sense of Indian’s treatment
at the hands of white society.
Both the above jokes draw on, and contribute
to, common
Indian
stereotypes
of the whiteman.
On one level, they bear out standard
interpretations
of the function of interethnic
stereotyping,
jokes, tricksterism and parodies.
For example,
folklorist William Clements,
drawing on the work of Basso (1979) and others, says of the ethnic joke that
“while it may indeed be the vehicle for intergroup
resentment
and
aggression
. . . it is also a construct of ideas by which participants
in a
culture define who they are-or
would like to be-by
laughing
at what
they hope they are not” (Clements
1986:95).
Therefore,
the “Gingerbread
Indian” joke may shore up Southwestern Indian identity by differentiating
Indians
from ignorant
tourists.
On another level, the joke also confirms
Indian perceptions
of whiteman’s behavior and how whites push them around. It is widely believed
94
NATIVE AMERICAN IMAGES OF TOURISTS
that humor provides an outlet for aggressive
feelings,
in the same way
that horror
stories and witchcraft
beliefs release fears (Freud
1905).
The aggression
is transparent
in this Navajo version of a widespread
American
joke:
A whiteman goes up to an Indian and asks him, “Hey where does this
road go?” The Indian looks up and says, “The road stays, you go!”
(Keith Cunningham,
personal communication).
The Indian’s
stand in this joke is in marked
contrast
to the two
previous
stories, where in one case the Indian runs away and in the
other, he just stands there, letting what has happened
sink in. Those
two stories can be seen as indictments
of Indian culture’s ineffectual
rebuttal to the whiteman.
This goes beyond the characterization
of the
ethnic joke as exaggerating
the follies of the Other in order to strengthen one’s own sense of cultural identity. A further level of meaning
in
these stories is reflexive,
a challenging
self-critique
generated
by the
interaction
between the Indians and the whiteman.
By parodying
the Other, the Indians also parody themselves.
One of
the cartoons in a slim volume composed by Freeman
(1980)
a Californian Indian, expresses this point. A tourist dressed in shorts is carefully
taking a picture of three totem poles. “Made in Japan” is incised on the
back of one of the totem poles. Clearly we have yet another example of
the naivety and gullibility of tourists. The tourist is so preoccupied
with
photographing Indian culture that he fails to see the totem pole- but it
does not matter to him anyway, because back at home his photograph
will appear to be of the real thing. This confirms
the stereotype
of the
whiteman’s
blind collectomania.
Even if the cartoon celebrates
Indian
tricksterism,
it also pokes fun at Indians who no longer make their own
totem poles-they
are content to let these ersatz totem poles stand as if
they are indigenous
productions
of their own religious
and cultural
values.
Freeman’s
(1980)
collection
of cartoons
is called For Indians Only.
Indian stories and jokes about whitemen/tourists
are essentially
for the
ears of Indians
or others “in the know.” The assumption
that communality
and familiarity
establishes
the joke-telling
context
has encouraged researchers
to assess ethnic jokes in relation to group cohesion
and boundary
maintenance
(Dundes
1971; Greenburg
1972; Zenner
1970). Much
other research
has examined
the effects of contact
on
ethnic stereotyping
and the problems
inherent in cross-cultural
contact
(Davidson
and Thompson
1980:39-62;
Stening
1979), but the role of
ethnic stereotyping
in the process of actual documented
interactions
between two groups is still almost virgin territory. MacCannell
suggests
that “the relationship
between the tourists and the local people is temporary and unequal. Any social relationship
which is transitory,
superlicial and unequal is a primary breeding
ground for deceit, exploitation,
mistrust,
dishonesty
and stereotype
formation”
(MacCannell
1984:
387-88).
So what does happen when two groups who regularly
stereotype one another
come together?
How is their behavior
towards one
another affected by their prior expectations?
DEIRDRE
WHEN
INDIANS
AND
EVANS-PRITCHARD
TOURISTS
95
MEET
Stories Indians tell about tourists,
while usually situationally
specific, add up to a pool of common
images. These images depict predictable tourist behavior, as well as incorporating
a sophisticated
awareness
of the conventional
preconceptions
tourists have about Indians.
This
mental repertoire
of stereotypes
provides a versatile “map” which actively informs
the ways that Indians
deal with tourists
when selling
their crafts. The following diverse examples
demonstrate
the extent to
which such interactions
are intricately
tied up with the perception,
expression
and manipulation
of stereotypes.
One recurrent
situation
that Indian artists have to deal with is continually being asked about the cultural significance
of their work. People buying Indian art are often very concerned
with the traditionality
and the “Indian-ness”
of an art piece. They want a particular
pot,
jewelry design, storyteller
doll, or whatever to illustrate a cultural story,
to have symbolic and even spiritual meaning.
After all, for many tourists, such souvenirs
are not only chosen for aesthetic reasons,
but also
as reminders
of a visit to another culture.
Yet many Indian
silversmiths
have told this writer that they use
traditional
shapes and symbols to create an aesthetic effect, not to tell a
cultural
story. Some stress that while their designs may reflect their
heritage,
they want to be treated purely as artists, not as representatives
of Indian culture.
Nevertheless,
Indian craftsmen
and traders sometimes respond to tourists’ needs for cultural significance
by telling them
just what they want to hear. While some of the silversmiths
observed
and interviewed
by this writer disapprove
of this practice,
others furnish tourists with stories for particular
items even though they did not
consciously
make the pieces with any story in mind. Telling the tourist
a snippet of traditional
custom or narrative appropriate
to a piece of art
may simply be done to keep the customer
satisfied.
On one level, this approach
simply indicates that Indians can be as
savvy as the next man in using successful marketing
strategies.
But it
also responds to touristic fascination
with Indian culture,
while being
cynical about tourists’ inability
to learn anything
real about it (which
brings to mind similar responses to unsuspecting
anthropologists,
as in
the earlier coyote story). As in the totem pole cartoon described
above,
Indian culture through the tourist lens is often what the tourists choose
to see, not always what is really there.
When selling his work to tourists, another silversmith
interviewed
by
this author consciously
parodies
stereotypes
of himself as an Indian.
Cippy Crazyhorse,
a highly respected
Cochiti
artist, always attends
Indian Market (the prestigious
annual market for Indian art, in Santa
Fe, New Mexico)
dressed in a suit to counteract
what he imagines to be
touristic
expectations-that
he would dress in traditional
clothes.
He
told of a harmless
trick he played one year on a middle-aged
Anglo
tourist in his booth at Indian Market.
A lady was examining
the silver
balls on a squash blossom necklace.
She turned to Cippy Crazyhorse
and in the slow, over-emphasized
fashion intended
for someone
who
does not really understand
English,
she asked “Are these hollow?” Cip-
96
NATIVE
AMERICAN
IMAGES
OF TOURISTS
py promptly
replied “Hello” and warmly shook her hand. Again the
lady asked, “Are these hollow?” pronouncing
the words even more theatrically this time. Cippy cheerily responded with another “Hello.” This
went on a few more times, by which time everyone around was laughing, until eventually
the lady herself saw the joke.
In this interaction,
Cippy Crazyhorse
manipulated
some touristic
images of Indians in order to confront
them and thus liberate himself
from ethnic stereotyping.
By dressing
in a suit, he symbolically
reversed the image of a feathered
Indian;
he simultaneously
enacted ad
absurdurn the stereotype
of the dumb Indian who cannot speak proper
English.
Using the lady’s predictable
preconceptions
as the starting
point of the communication,
Cippy was ultimately
able to cajole her
into seeing him as a fully-fledged
human being just like her.
Cippy Crazyhorse’s
informal tricksterism
has a formal, ritual counterpart
in the Indian
dances held on pueblo’s
feast days. Here the
traditional
koshure clowns burlesque
the outsider through
symbolic
inversion. Interestingly
enough, Cippy himself often performs as a clown
at his own pueblo’s feast days.
It is now a commonplace
that such symbolic
inversions
and
burlesquing
serve to reaffirm
community
values. As Sweet (1985:32)
reveals in her study of Tewa pueblo dances, “Tewa clown performances
in fact provide
social control
by demonstrating
how not to behave”
(Keith Basso makes a similar point regarding
Apache portraits
of the
whiteman,
as does Victor Turner (1967) in relation to rites of passage,
and Mary Douglas (1968) regarding
humor in general).
Pueblo clowns
burlesque
outsiders by exaggerating
the already overblown
stereotypes
of a group (e.g., the Navajo),
an institution
(e.g., tribal officials or the
Church),
or a social role (e.g., the tourist): “San Juan clowns also enjoy
borrowing
a camera from an Anglo tourist and taking pictures of each
other in ludicrous poses. They may also take pictures of the tourist who
lent them the camera,
thus reversing
the roles with the outsider
and
subtly posing the question,
‘see how it feels to be photographed
by a
stranger?“’
(Sweet 1985:33).
This action may indeed have internally
cohesive functions,
but one
wonders whether the dancers would mimic the tourists if the tourists
were not there to see the parody. Sweet’s question
above hints at this,
and it is plausible
that the clowns’ antics (like Cippy
Crazyhorse’s
improvisations)
are sophisticated
tauntings:
to see if the tourists can get
the joke and to remind them of where they are and who they are with.
Not all responses
to interactions
with tourists are as seamless or as
self-conscious
as the ones just described.
There are also spontaneous
emotional
reactions,
although
these too are steeped in conventional
images of tourists.
Such un-crafted responses
often reveal the bitterness
underlying
the use of humor to deal with tourism.
Certainly
the bitterness
is almost always there, and ever ready to
bubble up to the surface.
One Indian described
to this writer his feelings about whiteman
stories and jokes, saying that when he was younger, jokes about white people usually occurred
in the drinking
atmosphere of bars. But if you were sober, he continued,
the humor would
drop away and be transformed
into militancy.
Take the time a tourist pushed his way, uninvited,
into a Navajo
DEIRDRE
EVANS-PRITCHARD
97
moccasin-maker’s
hogan (house) and began taking pictures with a flash
of the family while they were eating. This real-life story starts out in the
same way as the Gingerbread
Indian joke, but has a different outcome.
Infuriated,
the Navajo man left the hogan and shot holes in the whiteman’s car tires (the tourist’s reaction
was to complain
that it was his
taxes that were funding the Indians on this reservation)
(Barre Toelken,
personal communication).
If you cannot
light back with actions,
then you can with words.
Steiner
tells of a conversation
with Laureen
Waukau,
a Menominee
Indian who worked in an Indian store selling trinkets to tourists. Just
before a busload of tourists arrived, she said:
Just recently I realized that I hate whites. When the tourist buses
come through and they come in here and stare at me, that’s when I
hate them. They call me “Injun.” Like on television. It’s a big joke to
them. You a “drunken Injun,” they say. “Injun” is a degrading word, I
hate it.
I am not human to them. I feel that I am an image, not a human
being, not a girl, not even an Indian. You know what I am? I am a
buffalo!
Then
the tourists
descended
on the Indian
store.
One lady gently touched the young girl’s wrist. “Dear, are you a real
Indian?” she asked. “I hope you don’t mind my asking, But you look
so American.” There was a stony silence.
“I am a buffalo,” Laureen said (Steiner 1968:90).
Inevitably
Laureen
is angry for being categorized
either as a social
problem or as a romantic
Other. Neither version reflects her perception
of herself, and it is unbelievable
to her that she has to look “Indian” in
order to be accepted
as authentic
by the tourists on whose dollars she
depends.
In replying to the lady, Laureen
is reacting
to romantic
images of Indian lifestyles that perpetuate
the idea of the “noble savage” and
that are laughable
in the face of the real hardships
of poverty and
marginality.
Her reference
to the buffalo plays on the association
of
Indians with nature (as opposed to whites with culture), and equates her
with a nearly extinct,
primitive
specimen
that has also suffered at the
hands of the whiteman.
Like Cippy Crazyhorse,
but without the humor,
Laureen manipulates
stereotypes to confront the tourist and thus salvage
some dignity from an unacceptable
but unavoidable
situation.
In order to do so, Laureen has ironically objectified
herself in exactly
the same way that tourists tend to objectify
the Indians they meet. Gail
Bird and her husband Yazzie Johnson
are among the top Indian silversmiths in Sante Fe, and are sophisticated
and well-traveled,
but the
respect in which they are generally
held does not protect them from
tourist trespass.
Frantic
buyers at the frenzied
Indian
Market
often
assume that everything
is up for grabs and treat the Indians as objects
too. The Indian
and his art become
indistinguishable,
as does the
tourist and his camera.
Gail finds that some people think of her and
other Indian artists as props and imagine they can come up and stroke
98
NATIVE AMERICAN IMAGES OF TOURISTS
her hair or make an offer for the necklace round her neck. In defending
her personal space, Gail is uncompromisingly
articulate.
Uncompromising
silence can be an effective defense too. The sullen,
brooding,
threatening
Indian of literary and screen fame can provide a
posture that Indians may adopt to avoid tourists or taunt them (Betaille
and Sillet 1980). When
folklorist
Toelken
was living on the Navajo
reservation,
he would hang out with the Indians
talking and joking
around
at the Kayenta
trading
post. Whenever
a earful of tourists
rolled in, silence would descend.
Frequently
the tourists wanted directions, asked to take pictures of the most “Indian-looking”
of the men,
and tried manfully
to make conversation.
The Indians would remain
silent and apparently
sullen, but as soon as the tourists left everyone
would burst out laughing (Barre Toelken, personal communication).
In this example,
the stereotype
of the silent Indian is being used “as
an aggressive
weapon against the very society that imposed it .” These
words are from Abraham?
classic 1970 study of how blacks adopted
and manipulated
white stereotypes
of blacks, turning
them into psychological
weapons with which to fight back. “Though
they accommodated to the stereotype
image, they converted their supposed animality,
supersexuality,
and childishness
- their thievery,
laziness,
and strong
smellfrom negative to positive attributes” (Abrahams
1970:230).
Somewhere
between uncompromising
silence and uncompromising
articulateness
falls another event Toelken has told this writer about. A
tourist asked an old Navajo man if he would sing him the original
version of the popular post-War
song “Along The Navajo Trail.” The
Indian said he knew the song and immediately
began to chant something. He chanted on, and on, and on. The tourist grew embarrassed,
wanting the Indian to stop, and eventually had to leave with the Indian
still singing.
When the tourist left, all the Navajos joined
in, and for
months afterwards
people would start singing the song in the trading
post and relive the comic situation.
When a tourist is in the heart of
Indian
country
and clearly a fish out of water, he becomes
an easy
target for trickery. Here the context has helped Indians to orchestrate
an interaction
their way.
While these stories demonstrate
Indian responses to tourist assumptions about them, they also bring into play Indian assumptions
about
tourists.
Enough
tourists
have behaved
in ways that violate Indian
space, privacy, and rights for tourists as a group to become stereotyped
as ignorant,
greedy, pushy, acquisitive,
and inappropriate.
As Royce
generally pick out some conspicuous
attribute
has written, “stereotypes
or attributes
and let it or them stand for the whole” (1982: 146). It looks
as if the relationship
between actual tourist behavior and the images of
tourists expressed
in Indian
folklore and art confirms
the argument
that in all stereotypes
there is a “kernel of truth” (Prothro
and Melikian
1955). This is despite the enormous
diversity of situations
and interactions that individual
Indians and tourists find themselves
in when they
meet. Thus stereotypes
can become
self-fulfilling,
insofar as Indian
stories about tourists help shape actual interactions
as well as being
shaped by them.
As noted earlier, tourists and Indians selling their crafts have widely
divergent
expectations
of each other, and while Indians
often have a
DEIRDRE
EVANS-PRITCHARD
99
very sophisticated
understanding
of the tourists’ preconceptions,
tourists rarely seem aware of how Indians might see them. This derives in
part from the fact that Indian craftsmen
have met numerous
tourists
while most tourists have encountered
few, if any, Indians.
Therefore,
the same group of Indians
sells to a different,
if typical,
group of
tourists every year (with the exception
of some familiar faces). Hence
Indian
stereotypes
of tourists are cumulative,
largely through
actual
interactions
with tourists,
while touristic
stereotypes
of Indians
are
usually held irrespective
of any face-to-face
contact with Indians.
Apart
from the images tourists have absorbed
from American
popular culture, visitors to the Southwest
can feel well-informed
about Indians
through museums,
lectures, books, tours, and Indian arts without having to converse with Indians.
From a questionnaire
given to tourists in
Santa
Fe, New Mexico,
this writer learned
that almost half of the
sample of one hundred did not even meet Indians on their visit.
The balance
of the sample most likely came across Indians
at the
portal of the Palace of the Governors
on Santa Fe’s central plaza, one of
the few established
places where Indians and tourists come face-to-face.
Here local Pueblo Indians selling their arts and crafts meet tourists on a
daily basis. This allows tourists the satisfaction
of buying
authentic,
handmade
crafts directly
from real Indians,
and gives Indians
the
opportunity
to sell their work at retail prices and get exposure as artists.
The social structure
of the portal setting is overtly binary. The respective roles of buyers and sellers keep tourists and Indians separate,
which is appropriate
since the currency
of cultural tourism is difference.
The use of space at the portal underscores
this. The Indians
sit in a
long line with their backs against the Palace wall. They sit on portable
chairs, cushions and crates, and they wait. In front of them are spread
their handiworks,
displayed on blankets which mark their selling spaces. Beyond the displays is the colonnaded
walkway along which people
stroll and stop to look at the crafts. Tourists wandering
by literally look
down on the art and the Indians
sitting behind it. They must squat
down to the Indian’s level when they want to examine a piece or initiate
a transaction,
but they can freely move on, comparing
work, prices,
and probably the personalities
of the sellers. Although being able to sell
at the portal is an advantage
for many craftspeople,
the following description
of state policies towards Indians
might easily apply to the
portal: “on one side they like to preserve us in nice little cages to show
us off and on the other side they control Indian economic
activities”
(personal
communication
by a Pueblo Indian lawyer, Santa Fe, 1987).
For the Indians,
selling at the portal is a job, with long hours and
often uncomfortable
conditions.
They arrive by 7 a.m. to be assured a
place to sell, which means that if they travel up from the Albuquerque
area they have to leave home around 5:30 in the morning.
They then sit
cramped
all day behind their rugs being asked repetitious
questions
about their prices, their work, and their culture.
(Of course, there are
compensations:
earning
a living, the pleasure of selling and of public
appreciation,
the chance to exchange
news with other Indians,
and so
on.) At the same time as they are doing business,
they are aware that
they sit at the portal as representatives
of Indian
culture.
In fact,
during a recent court case, the portal’s Indian vendors were described
100
NATIVE AMERICAN
IMAGES
OF TOURISTS
as “living exhibits” of the Museum
of New Mexico,
which owns the
Palace of the Governors
(Evans-Pritchard
1987:291).
If the Indians
are indeed living exhibits,
then one can look at the
portal as a theater-with
the Indians as performers
for an audience
of
tourists.
On the other hand,
given the Indian
anecdotes
and jokes
discussed here, it might be truer to the situation to say that the tourists
are the performers.
After all, in the theater it is usually the audience
that is seatedas are the Indians
at the portal. Of course,
in reality
both Indians and tourists are collaborating
in performances
which exemplify the “creative activities”
that MacCannell
argues arise “when
cultures change, or collide with one another, or when their illogicality
is
exposed” (1979: 153).
Mechling,
writing about Indian dances performed
for the public by a
Colorado-based,
non-Indian,
Boy Scout Troop, the Koshare
Indians,
draws on MacCannell’s
argument.
He interprets
the Koshare’s
performances as symbolically
interstitial.
“The Koshares
are at the boundary
where White and Native American
cultures meet. Their performances
are semiotic
interpretations
of that boundary”
(1980:29).
Taking this
line, the cultural
interplay
at the portal is a complex
of improvised
readings of the boundary
lines between Indians and tourists.
This writer has a hand-carved
Hopi kachina doll that is similarly
a
Native American
interpretation
of this boundary,
in that it is bi-cultural, expressing
both Hopi ritual and touristic
behavior.
The figure is
painted in the traditional
black and white stripes of the koshare, clown,
and is parodying
the tourist (Figure
1). With a balding
head and a
ridiculous
grin, the tourist is dressed only in baby-blue,
flowered bermuda shorts. He wears three cameras around his neck and carries four
camera cases (one may conclude
that this means that one camera was
stolen by the “natives”).
This figure not only represents
a cultural
boundary,
but because it was for sale to tourists,
it is itself part of the
interaction
that brings Indians and tourists together. Indian art, which
encompasses
Indian
culture
for most tourists,
becomes
the performance, the reason for Indian-tourist
interaction.
CONCLUSIONS
Spicer has marvelled
at the impressive
tenacity
with which Southwestern Indian groups adhere to their ethnic identities (1962: 106-l 10).
Such tenacity is exactly what tourists have come to witness, and their
presence has injected new life into pueblo economy.
This makes several
pueblos severely dependent
on tourist dollars.
So for all the negative
images of tourists, tourism also has its benefits and the Indians cannot
but feel ambivalent
about the agents of white patronage.
Just as some
Indian
artists feel ambivalent
when making
a sale: it is great to be
appreciated,
but there’s always the double-edged
sense that your work
has sold because it is Indian,
not because it is fine art.
Discomfort
is often in the air when Indians and tourists meet. The
Indians
are experienced
but often equivocal,
and the tourists are frequently
uncertain,
temporarily
in what they perceive
to be an alien
world. In such arenas of cross-cultural
uncertainty,
any human action
can be read several ways. For instance,
Sweet has found that some Tewa
DEIRDRE
Figure
1. Hopi
101
EVANS-PRITCHARD
Kachina
Doll,
“Koshare”
Tourist.
Indians
feel that tourists’ use of “please” and “thank you” is excessive,
and consider
the way tourists
rush to introduce
themselves
to be a
sign of impatience
(1985:69).
Therefore,
what tourists
might do to
make things more comfortable
for themselves
can have the opposite ef-
feet
A classic example of such interactional
dissonance
was described
to
this writer by Frances Begay, a Navajo selling at the portal. In the light
of the whiteman’s
historical
behavior
towards Indians,
the event’s key
image has a poignant
seriousness
to it. But as Frances
tells the story,
she has the last laugh. Her story confirms the stereotype
of the ignorant
tourist,
while her laughter
symbolically
restores
Frances’
dignity
in
what might otherwise have been a humiliating
(however unintentionally) situation:
A lady will come up to you
this is very frequent,
it seems like you
get it every other day. Older ladies, you know, like grandma-types
that
come. They say “You got a ring, a big one?” I say “For which finger?”
She says “This finger!’ [Here Frances raised her middle finger making
the “Fuck you’! sign, and then collapsed into laughter]. “They don’t
realize they’re doing it you know” (Frances Begay, personal communication).
102
NATIVE AMERICAN IMAGES OF TOURISTS
Mixed signals of this sort are an inevitable
result of cross-cultural
communication,
the translation
of word or gesture from A to B. But
perhaps
this is not as bad as it seems. After all, on one level, the
dissonance
between
Indian
and whiteman
perceptions
of each other
enable the Indians
to keep the tourists in the category
of outsiders,
while the tourists can avoid the discomfort
of having to really try and
understand
the Indians.
Armed with stereotypes
of tourists, and aware
of touristic
stereotypes
of Indians,
Indians
can exercise more control
over frequently
uncomfortable
situations.
They can develop ways to sell
their art which protect their dignity, satisfy the tourists,
and permit
enjoyable
interactions
when the chemistry
is right. Can one assume
that either side really wants to alter this relationship?
When individuals
cross cultural boundaries
through face-to-face
encounters,
they naturally
tend to rely on stereotypical
conceptions
of
each other to frame and structure the interactions.
Rightly or wrongly,
stereotypical
representations
of the Other
are resilient,
widespread,
and integral in cross-cultural
translation,
however dynamic and experimental these conceptions
can be. As Royce notes, “Without
them we
would be confronted
with a hopeless proliferation
of unique objects,
and we would be unable to predict the behavior of others” (1982: 145).
Of course,
on a theoretical
level, “any act of communication
can be
considered
translation,
since receivers
must decode the sender’s messense” of it by translating
it into their own frames of
sage, “making
reference
and mental sets” (Fine 19%4:93). While one does not intend to
be an apologist
for intercultural
misunderstanding,
it is natural
for
human beings to rationalize
the Other in whatever ways might be most
beneficial
to themselves.
One is rightly nervous of acknowledging
the functional
significance
of stereotypes
because they are so often ideologically
wrong. But taking
a moral stand on stereotyping
should not prevent one from investigating the integral roles which stereotypes
play in the process of tourism.
Dundes writing on ethnic jokes, blaison populaire, advocates
this standpoint as well as reminding
the reader of the moral aspect:
We cannot expect international slurs to disappear-there
is evidently
a deep human need to think in stereotypes. What we folklorists can do
is to examine the slurs to see what the stereotypes are and to label
them as stereotypes. We should not let the humor of the slurs fool us
into underestimating
the potential danger of national character stereotypes (1975:38).
Indian stereotypes
of tourists are probably
not as potentially
dangerous as tourist stereotypes
of Indians.
After all, tourists are only tourists
for a few weeks at a time, on average, and then they can go back home,
while Indians
are Indians
for life. In this light, the impact of Indians
treating all tourists as if they share the same basic characteristics
does
not compare to the impact of, say, American
images of Indians as lazy,
drunken
primitives
or colorful,
simple exotics.
For a minority,
for
“fourth worlders,” ethnic labeling can be devastating:
majority
stereotyping of minorities
generally oppresses.
Minority
stereotyping
of majorities
often seems to empower.
By studying how these two processes
DEIRDRE
EVANS-PRITCHARD
103
make contact in the arena of tourism,
one can delve further into the
communicative
aspects of tourism
and at the same time, right the
balance by presenting
more studies of how “they” see “us.“00
Acknowledgements-Thanks
go to the National Science Foundation,
Law and Social
Sciences Division, for funding the research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Barre Toelken,
Keith Cunningham,
Kenneth Lincoln, Cippy Crazyhorse,
Gail Bird, Yazzie Johnson,
Frances Begay, and many others were generous with stories and jokes.
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Submitted 5 November 1987
Accepted 12 January 1988
Refereed anonymously